State Senate Majoriy Leader Martin M. Looney said he would have preferred to receive a different type of magazine for a Christmas present.

“I wish he had sent me a New Yorker, the New Republic or the Atlantic,” Looney said when told he was the recipient of a high-capacity gun magazine.

Specifically, both Looney, D-New Haven, and state Sen. John McKinney, R-Fairfield, each were sent one 28-round standard capacity AR-15 magazine, manufactured by C Products Defense Inc. of Bradenton, Fla.

It was part of Alabama gun activist Mike Vanderboegh’s “Toys for Totalitarians” campaign, in which he is sending banned high-capacity magazines to some legislators after he finished sending various examples of magazines to the governors of Colorado, Maryland, New York and, as of Monday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Looney said he was informed by Capitol Police Sgt. Timothy Boyle of the present late Monday.

The majority leader said he didn’t accept it and a spokesman for the police said the three empty magazines have been turned over to the Connecticut State Police major crime squad.

Looney said some people think the entire Constitution resides in the Second Amendment, rather than understanding the totality of the document.

The “gifts” were sent to governors where gun control legislation passed in 2013 as a response to the mass shootings in Newtown and Aurora, Colo., among other incidents.

The magazines for Looney and McKinney, who is among a growing field of likely Republican candidates for governor next year, were addressed to the Senate Democratic offices.

Brett Cody, spokesman for McKinney, said the senator, when informed of the present, also declined to accept it.

Andrew Doba, spokesman for Malloy, would only say a magazine had been received and the state police were investigating.

Lt. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police, said detectives are examining “the types of circumstances of the receipt of it and state laws to ensure that no laws were violated.”

It doesn’t appear that sending an empty gun magazine in the mail is illegal and an agent in the New Haven field office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said ATF has no rules governing this.

Well, I know that comes as distinct disappointment to Little Jimmy Vann of the ATF Chief Counsel's office. However, they're ignoring the fact that we are continually smuggling other magazines by various routes into Connecticut. I have even announced my own complicity in such smuggling on the steps of their state capitol months ago.

Connecticut has banned ownership of high-capacity magazines since April 4, while residents who owned them before that had to register them with the state by Tuesday, or face a fine for an initial violation, then a possible jail term and the loss of the right to own any firearms.

The new state law in Connecticut forbids the importing of high-capacity magazines, said Michael Lawlor, Malloy’s chief policy person on criminal matters.

Vanderboegh has been taunting the governors and lawmakers who passed gun legislation off and on this year and by sending the contraband magazines he told several of them, in long letters attached to the gifts, to “go arrest yourself.”

In the latest posting on his blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, Vanderboegh said four more were in the mail on Monday, for a total of seven sent. Included among the recipients is David Gregory of NBC News. He said the last four “are the best of all.”

Oh, I see, she's interviewing MY BLOG. So THAT'S what passes for "journalism" in CT these days.

Vanderboegh said he has allegedly smuggled 300 magazines into Connecticut, New York, Maryland and Colorado and he has appealed to his supporters to send more to him, along with the funds to mail them.

Lawlor said if someone receives an illegal substance in the mail, an arrest would go to “the intent to possess,” which leaves unknowning recipients of banned magazines off the hook.

Vanderboegh was one of the speakers at an April pro-gun rally at the Capitol just after lawmakers had adopted the strict new gun control legislation. He said then that he already helped bring the banned magazines into the state and urged the crowd to engage in civil disobedience.

Oh, so they DID notice that little speech.

Vanderboegh sent Malloy a 30-round standard capacity AR15/M4 magazine, which he said was manufactured by Ammunition Storage Components in New Britain.

He tells Malloy that “your efforts to disarm your fellow citizens will play an important role in your re-election next year.” He said 50 banned magazines have been given to Connecticut citizens since the state’s gun law went into effect.

Vanderboegh said he was at least “guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny” and he invited him to try to make a case against him.

Quinn Hillyer has a piece calling for Republican unity. He has particularly scathing criticism of the Chamber of Commerce's Scott Reed, pointing out that this is the same genius who said Republicans could win by supporting gun control
and ran Bob Dole's presidential campaign. His critiques of Heritage and Club for Growth are milder and also make the point that both of those organizations have way better win records than Scott Reed.

A broom on the U.S.S. Wahoo periscope on her return to Pearl Harbor, 1943. The broom indicates the oceans were "swept clean". The pennant reads, "Shoot the sunza bitches".

It is an age-old naval tradition beginning, I am proud to say, in the 1650s, when the Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp, decisively whupped the British in the First Anglo-Dutch War, to hang or lash a broom to the mast signifying you have swept your enemy from the seas. In World War II, as can be seen above, the broom meant that a submarine had expended all its torpedoes at enemy targets.

Well, tie the broom to the mast, boys and girls. We've expended all our fish in the general direction of the enemy in the Toys for Totalitarians campaign. With the last four fired yesterday, we have a total of seven still in the water. I will report as they "hit."

As the David Gregory post indicated, we have also sent some fish to members of the "news media," and the final four are the best of all, although you'll have to wait for them to be signed for before I reveal those targets.

My apologies for being late to release the comments from yesterday. I came in about 6PM from picking up Rosie and I crapped out, falling asleep and not waking up until after midnight.

With the previous smuggling and the TFT campaign, we have now expended all the magazines y'all donated over the past months. If I had had more in the TFT effort (and the postage to send them on their way), I would have fired off more. In total we have smuggled, publicly and privately, more than 300 mags to CT, NY, MD and CO. To continue the smuggling campaign, we'll need more if you can give 'em.

I'll have updates as the final gifts track to their destinations.

Here's a graphic that David Codrea created. Pretty funny. But I still like the original better.

Congratulations! Enclosed you will find my belated Christmas gift to you, one twenty-eight-round standard capacity AR-15 magazine in 7.62x39 caliber, manufactured by C Products Defense, Inc. of Bradenton, Florida. You have been awarded this gift as part of what my friend David Codrea calls my “Toys for Totalitarians Campaign.” We had a few magazines left over after sending them to the governors of Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York so we decided to select certain state legislators who likewise deserved our scorn as self-declared domestic enemies of the Constitution and your name was among five at the top our list! So I selected a magazine for you in the caliber of 7.62x39, for that is the round originally designed for Mikhail Kalashnikov‘s AK-47. Given your collectivist politics, I thought it was an appropriate choice, since Kalashnikov was an unrepentant Soviet to the end of his days. (Kalashnikov, of course, just crossed over to meet his Maker. I’m sure his conversation with God about Stalin was an interesting one.) From one collectivist to another, I thought. Dulce et decorum est.

I first violated your recent citizen disarmament law on 18 April of this year, a fact which I declared in a speech on the Connecticut state house steps on the 20th of that month:

On Thursday I smuggled a half-dozen 30 round AR-15 standard capacity magazines into Connecticut in deliberate disobedience of the new state diktat. So to Martin Looney, Mike Williams, Larry Cafero and John McKinney I'd like to say this:

I JUST COMMITTED A "D" CLASS FELONY, YOU TYRANNICAL MORONS -- PROVE IT -- WHICH YOU CAN'T -- AND CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

Since then, as I told your governor in a similar award letter (which I have thoughtfully enclosed for your perusal), my friends and I have smuggled into Connecticut more than fifty such magazines and transferred them to Connecticut citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat. Since October, we have also smuggled in quantities of small arms ammunition and transferred them as well to previously law-abiding citizens whose only crime is to flout the unconstitutional and tyrannical statute that you petty tyrants have created.

But I send this Toys for Totalitarians award to you as a reminder that there is no law that you can pass that liberty-minded Americans -- including patriotic Connecticut citizens -- cannot defy, resist, evade and smuggle in opposition to it.

We will continue to do so until you all are swept out of power and this hateful, intolerable act repealed or you try to stop us by tyrannically working your will upon us by dispatching armed men to our doors.

As I said in the speech, “Any time you feel froggy.”

Sincerely, and hoping you have a happy socialist Kwanzaa (a holiday invented by an FBI COINTELPRO stooge),

Congratulations! Enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one twenty-eight-round standard capacity AR-15 magazine in 7.62x39 caliber, manufactured by C Products Defense, Inc. of Bradenton, Florida. You have been awarded this gift as part of what my friend David Codrea calls my “Toys for Totalitarians Campaign.” We had a few magazines left over after sending them to the governors of Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York so we decided to select collectivist media purveyors who likewise deserved our scorn and your name was among five at the top our list! You earned that thanks to your previous run-in with the District of Columbia’s draconian law when you flashed an AR-15 magazine to make a gun control point and suffered not at all thanks to the usual collectivist hypocrisy that is characteristic of the anointed of the DC Mandarin class to which you and your wife, former federal prosecutor and former Fannie Mae executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, Beth Wilkinson, belong. (We could chat about her role in the cover-up of the Oklahoma City bombing, but then I really don’t have the inclination at the moment -- so many smuggling challenges, so little time.)

So your anti-firearm hypocrisy is legendary and it goes without saying that you have a distinct bias when it comes to citizen disarmament. So I selected a magazine for you in the caliber of 7.62x39, for that is the round originally designed for Mikhail Kalashnikov‘s AK-47. Given your collectivist politics, I thought it was an appropriate choice, since Kalashnikov was an unrepentant Soviet to the end of his days. (Kalashnikov, of course, just crossed over to meet his Maker. I’m sure his conversation with God about Stalin was an interesting one.) From one collectivist to another, I thought. Dulce et decorum est.

Anyway, now that you’ve accepted another piece of technology that is illegal within the confines of the District of Columbia, you are once again in violation of the law. Why don’t you go down and turn yourself in for arrest? I mean, if you are intellectually honest you would, right? Oh, wait, the terms “intellectually honest” and NBC cannot be used in the same sentence, now can they?

As for myself I will continue my campaign of armed civil disobedience -- including smuggling -- against this latest spate of unconstitutional state laws. You may choose to twist that news in service to the collectivist meme however you like. You always do.

Sincerely, and hoping you have a happy socialist Kwanzaa (a holiday invented by an FBI COINTELPRO stooge),

Shipped two day service on the morning of the 23rd, finally signed for this morning at 10:51 Eastern by D. Maselek:

18 December 2013

Dannel P. Malloy, Governor

State Capitol

210 Capitol Avenue

Hartford CT 06106

Dear Governor Malloy,

Merry Christmas! Enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one thirty-round standard capacity AR15/M4 magazine, new in the wrapping, manufactured by Ammunition Storage Components in New Britain, a company that is according to press accounts considering moving from your fair state because of your tyrannical new law banning such devices to otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens.

My Connecticut friends tell me that your efforts to disarm your fellow citizens will play an important role in your reelection next year. They think they can mobilize enough folks to send you back to Stamford, if that’s where you choose to go. If true, that will put paid to your presidential ambitions, won’t it?
I note that the latest Quinnipiac poll from earlier this year has you at an even split on the approve/disapprove scale, 47% to 47%. This tracks with your previous near-death experience when you were first elected governor by a hair’s breadth amid allegations of voter fraud. Can you really afford losing all those voters alienated by your joined-at-the-hip relationship with Michael Bloomberg? No doubt Bloomie’s campaign donations will flow into your war chest -- although I note you still have not declared for reelection -- but then the energized single-issue voters in Connecticut won’t care about that, will they? Just ask the recalled Colorado state senators. All of Mike’s money didn’t do them a damn bit of good. And to be considered for president in 2016 you absolutely have to be reelected governor, don‘t you agree?

And now that all the provisions of your new tyrannical law have gone into effect, you can count on more headlines of the “honest-gun-owner-caught-in-Malloy‘s-ill-considered-law“ variety. The issue of citizen disarmament which you have embraced whole-hog will not be going away.

To ensure that, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such thirty-round magazines as you now own in defiance of that law. Indeed, since I first smuggled six such magazines back in April -- and announced that fact on the steps of your State House -- we have imported into your state more than fifty such magazines and transferred them to Connecticut citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat.

It is a modest number, to be sure, but then we work with modest means. All of the magazines we have smuggled to date were donated by folks -- some from Connecticut, including the one you hold in your hand -- who wished to slap you in the face with their defiance. My friends and I, Three Percenters all, are merely the conduit of their contempt for your petty tyranny. They believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Of course the trick is to make that point when the levers of power are in the hands of domestic enemies of the Constitution such as yourself.

In any case, I’m sure that since my own public defiance back in April, your state police -- known for their slavish toadying to the whims of the governor’s mansion -- have a file going on me. They will play hob trying to make a case on my friends, but I’d say that your Christmas gift may be proof that I, at least, am guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny. You’re a former drug war prosecutor from Brooklyn. Do you think you can make a case? I invite you to prosecute me if you think you can, but then there’s that pesky firearm rights issue that you just wish would go away until after your reelection.

It is a conundrum, ain’t it? Of course if you don’t come after me, my friends and I will have, to paraphrase Nathan Bedford Forrest, slapped your jaws and forced you to resent it. Can you stand our unanswered defiance? My bet is that you can’t, but even if I were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, my friends, including some of your fellow citizens, will continue to defy your unconstitutional law by smuggling in what you have banned. Connecticut, as I pointed out in my April speech, was a state that was built on patriot smuggling. Do you think your fellow citizens today are any less committed to opposing your depredations of their traditional liberties? Do you think they do not understand your growing appetite, like all tyrants, for their liberty, their property, and -- at the hands of the state police raiders enforcing your diktat -- their lives?

If you do, Dannell, you misunderstand their character. They may be a minority, but they are a determined minority and history, for good or ill, is made by such determined minorities. So, too, are reelections in such a divided state as yours. Good luck with that.

You know, when my wife read the rough draft of this letter she thought I had misspelled your name. No, I assured her, it is spelled “Dannel.” As you no doubt know it is a variant of the Hebrew “Daniel,” meaning “God is my judge.”

You would do well to remember that, Dannel, as the coming new year brings more prosecutions under, and more resistance to, your tyrannical law -- for God is certainly our Judge. In the end, you may find unwanted wisdom in the ancient Chinese caution, “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”

Oh, and one more thing. Since you now own an illegal device smuggled into your state in defiance of your diktat, I have this suggestion: Go arrest yourself.

Please keep Len and his family in your prayers. Here is his daddy's obituary:

Lennis F. Savage, Jr., age 69 of Newport, died 10:44 a.m. Friday, December 27th in the emergency room at Mercy Memorial Hospital.

Friends may visit from 2 – 8 p.m. Monday at Rupp Funeral Home where St. Anne’s Men’s Club will recite the Rosary at 7 p.m. He will lie instate 9 a.m. Tuesday at St. Anne’s Catholic Church. Mass of the Resurrection celebrating his life will be at 10 a.m. Rev. Victor Roman, Pastor of St. Charles Church, Newport will officiate. Burial will follow at St. Joseph Cemetery, Monroe.

Born June 5, 1944 in Monroe, he was the son of Lennis and Mildred (Bressler) Savage, Sr. He married Michelle D. Lambert on November 3, 1962 in St. Anne’s Church.

Lennis worked as a Tool & Die Maker with Ford Motor Company at their Woodhaven facility, retiring after 35 years of employment.

Lennis was a 1962 graduate of Monroe High School and attended trade school for his occupation. He was a member of United Auto Workers Local 387 in Woodhaven where he was proud to serve as a Skilled Trades Committeeman.

Lennis was a member of St. Anne’s Church and an active member of its Men’s Club. He is a former league bowler at Nortel Lanes and Monroe Sports Center and was a member of the Bressler Family Monday Night Card Club. Lennis and his wife Michelle attended Adoration every Friday in front of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Charles Church Chapel.

In addition to his wife Michelle, Lennis is also survived by five children; Kimberly (David) Flaga of Franklin, Georgia, Colleen (Scott) Bearden of Hokes Bluff, Alabama, Lennis (Sherrey) Savage, III of Franklin, Georgia, Kristin (Ron) Bostic of Newport, and Katherine Buckner of Newport; two brothers, Neil (Rosann) Runyon and James (Barbara) Runyon, both of Monroe; two sisters, Nancy Souva and Karen Smeltzer, both of Monroe; sister-in-law Nancy Savage of Monroe; 20 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.

Lennis was preceded in death by his parents, a brother Robert Savage, and granddaughter Dymond Nycole Lennette.

We have seven fish currently in the water, running true (if some of them a bit slow thanks to the postal turtle). If the post office box delivers up some more postage expense money, we'll fire the last four torpedoes today.

After that, we'll see how the totalitarians react. A friend (and resident of Maryland) wrote, "I think you stuck your head in the craw of the lion, sending what you did to O'Malley. . . Please watch yourself."

Well, I can understand O'Malley might be a bit tiffed. It isn't often, I imagine, that somebody tells a man of such monumental ego and not inconsiderable power to "kiss me arse."

This is, however, the duty I signed up for when I laid out the principles of the Three Percent years ago. This seemingly "suicidal behavior" as one of my close friends called it, is nothing new. By way of explanation, I have been referring such concerned friends to these two posts from 2009: "Eat me! EAT! ME!" and Gambit: "Waco Jim" Cavanaugh and Gran Torino.

The Toys for Totalitarians campaign (thank you, David Codrea, for the apt moniker) is a gambit, designed to to both stake out in greater detail the doctrine of "Defy -- Resist -- Evade -- Smuggle" and to elicit a response from the domestic enemies of the Constitution. It is a gambit. And yes, I chose the United States Postal Service as a conduit for these "torpedoes" deliberately.

However these petty tyrants react, by the time the last four postal fish find their dictatorial targets it should be plain that -- regardless of politics, regardless of whatever friendly judgments they get from their black-robed partners in constitutional crime -- there is no unconstitutional law that they can pass and enforce that we cannot defy, resist, evade and smuggle in answer to it.

The letters and gifts are, from our point of view, certainly funny. But they also evince a deadly seriousness on our part. Not one more inch. NOT ONE MORE INCH.

Thank you for all your prayers and messages of support. A good friend sent me a wristband, upon which the Latin phrase "Deo Vindice" is engraved. I am wearing it now. When God decides he's done with me, He can call me home anytime. Until then I intend to stand. Given the success of my fight against cancer and other chronic disabilities these past two years, I believe that He is not done with me just yet. So I will stand. What the tyrant wannabes do about that is up to them. They must make their own calculations about whether or not the collection of my hide is worth the unintended costs to them. I will stand. Deo vindice.

“It is like a diseased town,” said the Newark store owner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the assailants in the Mercedes case, who have not been caught. “There are a lot of predators.”

Reader Chris forwards this link with the comment: "This out in the open story about appliance networking doesn't cover the hidden aspects of what other data might be collected and how such data might be misused. He also writes:

I suspect that there already are backchannels in whatever wireless networks are around to transmit things like your taste in movies back from your new DVD player to the corporate/government computer complex. I suspect that cable modems have microphones in them to transmit audio, but I'm too lazy and dysfunctional to open one up and study it. Google's terms of use specifically include that they can record audio from your computer That is one downside of microelectronics and complexity - just about any functionality can be hidden in plain sight. So, you have to watch for the fugitive transmissions in other ways that are more convenient. Like the guy with the EZ Pass monitor.

This is part of the genre of fugitive emissions from devices. Note that it is intentional misdirection to suggest that the Chinese are behind it, or even are the major players. The problem is far more pervasive and the "no secrets agency" are major players in this sector. They do a very thorough job covering their tracks.

Forwarded by long-time reader Michael who observes "An Andrew McCarthy article on how the regressives suppress free speech and
freedom of religion by using the government to create a climate where non state
actors do the actual suppression so the government can claim they didn't violate
the Bill of Rights. I particularly enjoyed the second paragraph and last
paragraph."

My favorite so far: "Why hasn't this terrorist been arrested? I really think we need to make a priority to take out these right-wing teabagging domestic terrorists (and hold them in a Gitmo like area). I will guarantee you that once you start to do this, this kind of activity will drop."

The full-throated baying of collectivist dogs for my hide is just getting tuned up. Wait'll they get a load of the next spread of deliveries.

USPS reports that the following letter and package was signed for by A Hasson at Albany, NY, at 9:24 this morning.

23 December 2013

Andrew M. Cuomo

NYS State Capitol Building

Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Cuomo,

Merry Christmas! Although it will no doubt get to you late, enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one thirty-round standard capacity AK-74 magazine in 5.45x39 caliber, manufactured by TAPCO, USA, located in the great little town of Kennesaw, Georgia, where every head of household residing within the city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition. You have been awarded this gift as part of what my friend David Codrea calls my “Toys for Totalitarians Campaign.”

I selected this magazine in honor of Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died today. Given your collectivist politics, I thought it was an appropriate choice, since Kalashnikov was an unrepentant Soviet to the end of his days. To other tyranneau governors such as yourself -- Hickenlooper of Colorado and Malloy of Connecticut -- I sent magazines manufactured in their states to remind them of the companies (and jobs) departing their jurisdictions because of their own unconstitutional laws banning such devices to otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens. But you don’t need any reminders about what the wildly misnamed SAFE Act is costing your state, so the Kalashnikov magazine seemed the appropriate choice. From one collectivist to another, I thought.

My New York friends have hopes that your efforts to disarm your fellow citizens will play an important role in your reelection next year. They think they can mobilize enough folks to cost you at the polls, although the latest Quinnipiac poll has you looking pretty good. But then there’s a long time between now and the election and there’s no telling what sort of verbal and policy gaffes might jump out at you -- or out of you. The SAFE Act has the real potential to damage your campaign, and to be considered for president in 2016 you absolutely have to be reelected governor, don‘t you agree? Why that might even motivate Hillary Clinton to funnel money through the NRA’s political action arm to your GOP opponent in 2014. As I asked Maryland’s Governor O’Malley:

What is it about you anti-firearm governors? You, Cuomo of New York, Malloy of Connecticut -- all of you all have the out-sized egos and even larger appetites for power that make you believe that you deserve to rightfully sit in George Washington’s chair. Even Hicklenlooper of Colorado, as disingenuously coy as he is, believes he belongs there and would drop his faux modesty in a New York minute if he thought he had the poll numbers. And all of you apparently think that citizen disarmament is a winning national issue that will get you to the Oval Office. One must ask, what are you all smoking?

Bill Clinton is said to be a friend of yours. Ask him about the political consequences of gun control. After all, the first Assault Weapons Ban gave him Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House. And now that all the provisions of your new tyrannical law have gone into effect, you can count on more headlines of the “honest-gun-owner-caught-in-Cuomo’s-ill-considered-law“ variety. The issue of citizen disarmament which you have embraced whole-hog will not be going away.

To ensure that, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such thirty-round magazines as you now own in defiance of that law. Indeed, my friends and I have imported into your state more than forty such magazines and transferred them to New York citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat.

It is a modest number, to be sure, but then we work with modest means. All of the magazines we have smuggled to date were donated by folks -- some from New York -- who wished to slap you in the face with their defiance. My friends and I, Three Percenters all, are merely the conduit of their contempt for your petty tyranny. They believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Of course the trick is to make that point when the levers of power are in the hands of domestic enemies of the Constitution such as yourself.

In any case, you are now welcome to have your state police open a case file on me. They will play hob trying to make a case on my friends, but I’d say that your Christmas gift may be proof that I, at least, am guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny. But then you still want to president, don’t you? To do that you not only have to get past Hillary and the Democrat primaries in 2016, but win a general election -- and gun control, in case you hadn’t noticed, doesn’t play well in the country at large. And the more tyrannical your enforcement of the SAFE Act becomes, the more it discredits you and your political party. The Law of Unintended Consequences is iron-clad, and it can neither be repealed nor its verdicts appealed.

Of course if you don’t come after me, my friends and I will have, as they say in South, slapped your jaws and forced you to resent it. Can you stand our unanswered defiance? My bet is that you can’t -- your monumental ego won’t let you -- but even if I were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, my friends, including some of your fellow citizens, will continue to defy your unconstitutional law by smuggling in what you have banned. How well do you know your own state’s history? What would William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis and Lewis Morris -- all men who risked everything as signatories of the Declaration of Independence -- do in response to your petty tyranny? What would the men of New York’s revolutionary generation do? Which way would they be pointing their muskets? Do you think your fellow citizens today are any less committed to opposing your depredations of their traditional liberties? Do you think they do not understand your growing appetite, like all tyrants, for their liberty, their property, and -- at the hands of the state police raiders enforcing your diktat -- their lives?

If you do, you misunderstand their character. They may be a minority, but they are a determined minority and history, for good or ill, is made by such determined minorities. So, too, are critical one-issue voters in state and national elections.

Oh, and one more thing. Since you now own an illegal device smuggled into your state in defiance of your diktat, I have this suggestion: Go arrest yourself.

John Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, contends that the bandits who killed Terry were working for FBI operatives and were sent to the border to do a drug rip-off using intelligence from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

“I don’t think the (FBI) assets were part of the rip-off crew,” Dodson said. “I think they were directing the rip crew.”

Dodson’s comments to The Arizona Republic amplify assertions he made in his recently released book, “The Unarmed Truth,” about his role as a whistle-blower in the Fast and Furious debacle.

You know, if John had worked for the FBI instead of the ATF, he would have ended up as another anonymous corpse in the desert in late December 2010. He still might.

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'

'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.

'I won't!' said Alice.

'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.

-- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 12.

The Toys for Totalitarians program proceeds. It was first announced with the reproduction of my letter to Colorado Governor Hickenlooper in these pages last Saturday. Written on the 18th, it was consigned to the postal turtle only on the 21st by Priority Mail 2-Day (it wasn't until then that some kind soul sent me the subscription money to enable me to make the shipment. The USPS doesn't do charity). It should have arrived no later than the 24th. Indeed if you punch in the tracking number at the moment it shows "Expected Delivery Date: December 24, 2013." However, the last transaction on the USPS tracking report shows "Depart USPS Sort Facility Denver" yesterday, the 26th, with no time attached. The tracking number for those interested is 9114 9010 7574 2681 6282 87.

My present for Governor O'Malley of Maryland, "Póg mo thóin," was sent on the 23rd (USPS tracking number 2311 0770 0000 5589 7463) and arrived yesterday morning and was signed for, as noted in the post, by J. Sylvester at 10:54AM. The package for Governor Malloy went out at the same time (USPS tracking number 2311 0770 0000 5589 7470) and shows an expected delivery date of the 26th but unaccountably also shows the last activity was "Depart(ing) USPS Sort Facility, Birmingham, AL" on the 24th. Thus it is impossible to say where it is at the moment.

Yesterday afternoon I received this email:

From: Mary O'leary moleary13@gmail.com

To: georgemason1776@aol.com

Sent: Thu, Dec 26, 2013 1:30 pm

Subject: ammunition sent to governors

Mr.Vanderboegh,

I'm a reporter with the New Haven Register in New Haven, Ct., following up on the Dec. 24 posting on your blog warning that you plan to send more governors banned magazines in their states

Are you planning to send these to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in Connecticut? Are there other officials on your list in Connecticut or other states?

Back in April when you addressed a crowd of gun rights activists at the state Capitol, you promised to smuggle in banned ammunition to Connecticut to pass out to some gun owners and then go have a pizza at Pepe's.

Were you able to do that?

Thanks,

Mary O'Leary 203-641-2577 (cell)

I responded:

From: georgemason1776@aol.com

To: moleary13 moleary13@gmail.com

Sent: Thu, Dec 26, 2013 1:47 pm

Subject: Re: ammunition sent to governors

"Are you planning to send these to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in Connecticut? Are there other officials on your list in Connecticut or other states?"

The Christmas present to Governor Malloy is on track to deliver today. When I have delivery confirmation from CT later today I will send you a copy of the letter. Like the Hickenlooper letter, I had fun with it. Each letter and gift is tailored to the recipient. Yes, I sent other Toys for Totalitarians to other governors.

"Back in April when you addressed a crowd of gun rights activists at the state Capitol, you promised to smuggle in banned ammunition to Connecticut to pass out to some gun owners and then go have a pizza at Pepe's. Were you able to do that?"

Yes and no. Yes, after the restrictions went into effect in October (not July as I indicated in my speech, I was misinfp0rmed by one of the local folks in CT) I smuggled ammunition into CT along with more magazines, but no I wasn't able personally -- thanks to health issues -- to do it myself. Still looking forward to Frank Pepe's pizza. I will bring more ammo and magazines to CT in the spring. My cell number is REDACTED.

I received this in return at 2:16 PM:

Mr. Vanderboegh,

I'm assuming that no one was arrested or charged in the smuggling. Is that the case? It sounds like you sent other people to smuggle in the magazines. Right? Can you be specific as to the kind of ammunition and capacity of the magazines, when this occurred and in what town?.

Can you forward the letter to Gov. Malloy? Was it sent through the U.S. Postal Service or UPS?

Thanks,

Mary O'Leary

I answered at 2:19 PM:

"When I get confirmation of delivery I will let you interview me in full and will answer all your questions."

At 3:25 PM I received the simple reply: "Thank you."

Then at 5:40 PM I got this:

Mr. Vanderboegh,

I contacted Gov. Hickenlooper's office and they said they never received your gift of a 30-round AR15/M4..

Do you have confirmation that it was delivered?

Mary O'Leary

To which I replied, at 6:09 PM: "Sent on the 21st. Should have delivered no later than Christmas Eve. Apparently went out for delivery today. That's the postal turtle for you."

At 6:17 PM I sent her this:

"The one to Maryland governor O'Malley delivered today and was signed for. Malloy's is still somewhere in the USPS system, apparently. I am forwarding you a copy of the O'Malley letter."

Evidently, Ms. O'Leary slipped into her Red Queen mode and decided to have the story first, then the interview.

Since we seem to have raised some question in that inquiring reporter's mind about my "claims," here is the letter I sent to Malloy. I'm sure the postal turtle will get around to delivering it one day, or, if not, I'll just send the gun-banning bastard another one.

From the desk of Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926, Pinson AL 35126

18 December 2013

Dannel P. Malloy, Governor

State Capitol

210 Capitol Avenue

Hartford CT 06106

Dear Governor Malloy,

Merry Christmas! Enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one thirty-round standard capacity AR15/M4 magazine, new in the wrapping, manufactured by Ammunition Storage Components in New Britain, a company that is according to press accounts considering moving from your fair state because of your tyrannical new law banning such devices to otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens.

My Connecticut friends tell me that your efforts to disarm your fellow citizens will play an important role in your reelection next year. They think they can mobilize enough folks to send you back to Stamford, if that’s where you choose to go. If true, that will put paid to your presidential ambitions, won’t it?
I note that the latest Quinnipiac poll from earlier this year has you at an even split on the approve/disapprove scale, 47% to 47%. This tracks with your previous near-death experience when you were first elected governor by a hair’s breadth amid allegations of voter fraud. Can you really afford losing all those voters alienated by your joined-at-the-hip relationship with Michael Bloomberg? No doubt Bloomie’s campaign donations will flow into your war chest -- although I note you still have not declared for reelection -- but then the energized single-issue voters in Connecticut won’t care about that, will they? Just ask the recalled Colorado state senators. All of Mike’s money didn’t do them a damn bit of good. And to be considered for president in 2016 you absolutely have to be reelected governor, don‘t you agree?

And now that all the provisions of your new tyrannical law have gone into effect, you can count on more headlines of the “honest-gun-owner-caught-in-Malloy‘s-ill-considered-law“ variety. The issue of citizen disarmament which you have embraced whole-hog will not be going away.

To ensure that, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such thirty-round magazines as you now own in defiance of that law. Indeed, since I first smuggled six such magazines back in April -- and announced that fact on the steps of your State House -- we have imported into your state more than fifty such magazines and transferred them to Connecticut citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat.

It is a modest number, to be sure, but then we work with modest means. All of the magazines we have smuggled to date were donated by folks -- some from Connecticut, including the one you hold in your hand -- who wished to slap you in the face with their defiance. My friends and I, Three Percenters all, are merely the conduit of their contempt for your petty tyranny. They believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Of course the trick is to make that point when the levers of power are in the hands of domestic enemies of the Constitution such as yourself.

In any case, I’m sure that since my own public defiance back in April, your state police -- known for their slavish toadying to the whims of the governor’s mansion -- have a file going on me. They will play hob trying to make a case on my friends, but I’d say that your Christmas gift may be proof that I, at least, am guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny. You’re a former drug war prosecutor from Brooklyn. Do you think you can make a case? I invite you to prosecute me if you think you can, but then there’s that pesky firearm rights issue that you just wish would go away until after your reelection.

It is a conundrum, ain’t it? Of course if you don’t come after me, my friends and I will have, to paraphrase Nathan Bedford Forrest, slapped your jaws and forced you to resent it. Can you stand our unanswered defiance? My bet is that you can’t, but even if I were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, my friends, including some of your fellow citizens, will continue to defy your unconstitutional law by smuggling in what you have banned. Connecticut, as I pointed out in my April speech, was a state that was built on patriot smuggling. Do you think your fellow citizens today are any less committed to opposing your depredations of their traditional liberties? Do you think they do not understand your growing appetite, like all tyrants, for their liberty, their property, and -- at the hands of the state police raiders enforcing your diktat -- their lives?

If you do, Dannell, you misunderstand their character. They may be a minority, but they are a determined minority and history, for good or ill, is made by such determined minorities. So, too, are reelections in such a divided state as yours. Good luck with that.

You know, when my wife read the rough draft of this letter she thought I had misspelled your name. No, I assured her, it is spelled “Dannel.” As you no doubt know it is a variant of the Hebrew “Daniel,” meaning “God is my judge.”

You would do well to remember that, Dannel, as the coming new year brings more prosecutions under, and more resistance to, your tyrannical law -- for God is certainly our Judge. In the end, you may find unwanted wisdom in the ancient Chinese caution, “Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”

Oh, and one more thing. Since you now own an illegal device smuggled into your state in defiance of your diktat, I have this suggestion: Go arrest yourself.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The following letter with accompanying gift was delivered today in Annapolis, Maryland and signed for by J. Sylvester at 10:54 AM.

From the desk of Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926, Pinson AL 35126

18 December 2013

Martin O’Malley, Governor

100 State Circle

Annapolis, MD 21401

Dear Governor O’Malley,

Merry Christmas! Enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one ratty old twenty-round steel standard capacity magazine for a CETME semi-automatic rifle. I thought about sending you a nice new Beretta M-9 pistol magazine manufactured in your state but then I realized that this is just going to end up in an evidence bag and it‘s not like you don‘t know that Beretta is thinking about moving out of your fair state because of the tyrannical new law that you signed banning such devices to otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens.

We all know you are term-limited and cannot seek another stint as Maryland governor, but your presidential aspirations are almost legendary. I have to ask: What is it about you anti-firearm governors? You, Cuomo of New York, Malloy of Connecticut -- all of you all have the out-sized egos and even larger appetites for power that make you believe that you deserve to rightfully sit in George Washington’s chair. Even Hicklenlooper of Colorado, as disingenuously coy as he is, believes he belongs there and would drop his faux modesty in a New York minute if he thought he had the poll numbers. And all of you apparently think that citizen disarmament is a winning national issue that will get you to the Oval Office. One must ask, what are you all smoking? I have before me a copy of the photo of you at the bill signing ceremony on 16 May 2013. You are, as my Michigan farmer grandpa used to say, “grinning like a chimp.” Yet, as Emily Miller wrote in the Washington Times then:

“Mr. O’Malley’s legacy will be an angry citizenry who lost their constitutional rights, firearm manufacturers taking jobs out of state and no change in the crime. He will have to justify this rash move to voters in his try for higher office.”

Indeed you will. Of course, your national aspirations are hardly matched by your name recognition, but then you no doubt are hoping for some of Mike Bloomberg’s millions to help you correct that inconvenient disparity. And should your darkest of dark horse candidacies look like it has a prayer in 2016, no doubt Bloomie’s campaign donations will flow into your war chest. No doubt your attacks on the traditional liberties of American firearm owners are no impediment to success in any Democrat primary. If there’s one thing you collectivists agree upon it is disarming those who disagree with you politically. But just how do you think that will play in the general election? So, I look at your happy face as you signed a bill subverting the constitutional rights of your fellow Marylanders and I ask myself, “Why is this idiot smiling?”

And now that all the provisions of your new tyrannical law have gone into effect, you can count on more headlines of the “honest-gun-owner-caught-in-O’Malley‘s-ill-considered-law“ variety. The issue of citizen disarmament which you have embraced whole-hog will not be going away.

To ensure that, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such magazines as you now own in defiance of that law. Indeed, counting the one your aide (or some state policeman) is now holding in his hand, my friends and I have smuggled more than two dozen such magazines into your state and transferred them to Maryland citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat.

It is a modest number, to be sure, but then we work with modest means. All of the magazines we have smuggled to date were donated by folks -- some from Maryland -- who wished to slap you in the face with their defiance. My friends and I, Three Percenters all, are merely the conduit of their contempt for your petty tyranny. They believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Of course the trick is to make that point when the levers of power are in the hands of domestic enemies of the Constitution such as yourself.

In any case, with this Christmas gift you may now have your state police open a file on me with a view to prosecution. They will play hob trying to make a case on my friends, but I’d say that with this modest piece of steel you now own it may be inferred that I, at least, am guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny. I invite you to prosecute me if you think you can, but then there’s that pesky firearm rights issue that you may regret in a national election.

It is a conundrum, ain’t it? Of course if you don’t come after me, my friends and I will have, as they say in South, slapped your jaws and forced you to resent it. Can you stand our unanswered defiance? My bet is that you can’t, but even if I were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, my friends, including some of your fellow citizens, will continue to defy your unconstitutional law by smuggling in what you have banned. How well do you know your Maryland history? What would Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone and Charles Carroll -- all men who risked everything as signatories of the Declaration of Independence -- do in response to your petty tyranny? What would the men of the Maryland Line, who George Washington counted as his most faithful soldiers, do? Which way would they be pointing their muskets? Do you think your fellow citizens today are any less committed to opposing your depredations of their traditional liberties? Do you think they do not understand your growing appetite, like all tyrants, for their liberty, their property, and -- at the hands of the state police raiders enforcing your diktat -- their lives?

If you do, you misunderstand their character. They may be a minority, but they are a determined minority and history, for good or ill, is made by such determined minorities. So, too, are critical one-issue voters in national elections.

And you count yourself as a proud Irish American. What would Michael Collins say, come to that, about your wanting to take firearms out of the hands of the people?

Póg mo thóin.

Oh, and one more thing. Since you now own an illegal device smuggled into your state in defiance of your diktat, I have this suggestion: Go arrest yourself.

My son and I were talking the other day about Obamacare and the political consequences of it and other scandals in 2014. Matt said, and I concurred, that our present "elites" who seek to jam all this tyranny down our throats really aren't very elite in any sense of that word beyond self-appreciated position. Matt said, "They really are rather stupid." Their primary error is to mistake completely the character of the people they seek to rule and to fail to see that such failure will have personal consequences for them.

That conversation came to mind on Christmas night when, true to insomniac form, I pulled down my well-thumbed paperback copy of Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card (Trussville Library discard, purchased for a quarter) and began to read Bean's account of the final battle in The Bugger War.

Ender's Shadow, a parallel novel to Ender's Game, describes the same events from the perspective of Bean, a Rotterdam street urchin who has become Ender Wiggin's right hand in the war with the Formics, derogatorily known as "Buggers," an insectoid alien species that threatens to destroy the earth. As Wikipedia sums up: "In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are trained at a very young age through increasingly difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tactical genius is revealed."

So, too, is Bean's. The Formics are the ultimate collectivist hive race, controlled by queens through telepathy and a faster-than-light communication device called the ansible. After the last clash with the Buggers, humans gathered all the ships they could muster and dispatched them to the various planets where Buggers had colonized, including their home world. Thus, the final battle of the war will be fought with the Earth's oldest ships, crewed by volunteers who signed on knowing it was likely a one way trip, and directed by the children. This information is kept from the child soldiers of Battle School, who are taught to use their innate gifts in games and simulations that, in the end, are all too real.

The battles are increasingly costly and more difficult until finally comes the penultimate confrontation at the Bugger's home world:

The enemy appeared in the display.

Their fleet was deployed around a planet that loomed in the center of the display. There had been battles near planets before, but every other time, the world was near the edge of the display -- the enemy fleet always tried to lure them away from the planet.

This time there was no luring. Just the most incredible swarm of enemy ships imaginable. Always staying a certain distance away from each other, thousands and thousands of ships followed random, unpredictable, intertwining paths, together forming a cloud of death around the planet.

This is the home planet, thought Bean . . . They've had generations to prepare for us to come. All the previous battles were nothing. These Formics can lose any number of individual Buggers and they don't care. All that matters is the queen. Like the one Mazer Rackham killed in the Second Invasion. And they haven't put a queen at risk in any of these battles. Until now.

That's why they're swarming. There's a queen here. . . On the planet's surface, thought Bean. The idea is to keep us from getting to the planet surface.

Except that there was no way to get this small force of human ships through that swarm and near enough to the planet to deploy Dr. Device. For if there was anything that history taught, it was this: Sometimes the other side is irresistibly strong and then the only sensible course of action is to retreat in order to save your force to fight another day.

In this war, however, there would be no other day. There was no hope of retreat. The decisions that lost this battle, and therefore this war, were made two generations ago when these ships were launched, an inadequate force from the start. The commanders who set this fleet in motion ,ay not even have known, then, that this was the Bugger's home world. It was no one's fault. They simply didn't have enough of a force even to make a dent in the enemy's defenses. It didn't matter how brilliant Ender was. When you have only one guy with a shovel, you can't build a dike to hold back the sea.

No retreat, no possibility of victory, no room for delay or maneuver, no reason for the enemy to do anything but to continue to do what they were doing.

There were only twenty starships in the human fleet, each with four fighters. . . Eighty fighters. Against five thousand, maybe ten thousand enemy ships. It was impossible to determine the number. . .

A long time passed -- many seconds, perhaps a minute. By now Ender usually had them all deployed, ready to move. But still there was nothing from him but silence. . .

Ender has to try. If he doesn't we'll all die. Because even if they weren't going to send another fleet against us, after this they'll HAVE to send one. Because we beat all their fleets in every battle till now. If we don't win this one, with finality, destroying their capability to make war against us, then they'll be back. And this time they'll have figured out how to make Dr. Device themselves. . .

"Remember," Bean said ironically, "the enemy's gate is down." . . . But Ender didn't seem to get the joke. Ender didn't seem to understand that there was no way to get Dr. Device to the planet's surface.

Instead, his voice came into their ears, giving them orders. He pulled them into tight formation, cylinders within cylinders. . .

Surely the enemy sees what we're doing, thought Bean. Surely they see how every third or fourth move takes us closer and closer to the planet.

At any moment the enemy could destroy them quickly by concentrating their forces. So why weren't they doing it?

One possibility occurred to Bean. The Buggers didn't dare concentrate their forces close to Ender's tight formation, because the moment they drew their ships close together, Ender could use Dr. Device against them.

And then he thought of another explanation. Could it be that there were simply too many bugger ships? Could it be that the queen or queens had to spend all their concentration, all their mental strength just keeping ten thousand ships swarming through space without getting too close each other?

Unlike Ender, the Bugger queen couldn't turn control of her ships over to subordinates. She had no subordinates . . . That's why she wasn't responding intelligently. . . In fact, the maneuvers the Buggers were making were ludicrously wrong. For as Ender penetrated deeper and deeper into the planet's gravity well, the Buggers were building up a thick wall of forces BEHIND Earth's formation.

They're blocking our retreat!

At once Bean understood a third and most important reason for what was happening. The Buggers had learned the wrong lessons from the previous battles. Up to now, Ender's strategy had always been to ensure the survival of as many human ships as possible. He had always left himself a line of retreat. The Buggers, with their huge numerical advantage, were finally in a position to guarantee that the human forces would not get away.

There was no way, at the beginning of this battle, to predict that the Buggers would make such a mistake. Yet throughout history, great victories had come as much because of the losing army's errors as because of the winner's brilliance in battle. The Bugger's have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. We don't throw our forces away because every soldier is the queen of a one-member hive. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong -- for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.

They don't believe we'll use Dr. Device because the only way to use it is to destroy our own ships in the process. . . Win or lose, there'd be no human survivors from this battle.

They've never seen us make a move like that. They don't understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives -- except for the times that they don't. In the Bugger's experience, autonomous beings do not sacrifice themselves. Once they understood our autonomy, the seed of their defeat was sown. . . They had no way of knowing the story of blind Samson, who pulled down the temple on his own head to slay his enemies.

The domestic enemies of the Constitution, those who would rule as tyrants over us, whose appetites for our liberty, our property and our lives seem insatiable, do not understand this. As I have written before, they extrapolate their intended victims' expected behavior from their own cowardice, knowing that THEY would not risk imprisonment or death in standing up to the imperial federal government over something as unimportant to them as liberty or property. Their lives and comfort are the most important things to them. They have no true principles beyond that and the accumulation of power. Thus they do not understand, truly understand, that there are in fact people who would die for their principles. More importantly from their point of view, there are not only people who are willing to die for their principles but to kill in righteous defense of them as well. And, not to put too fine a point on it, such people are willing to kill THEM as well -- these proto-tyrants who would rob our children of their traditional, God-given and inalienble rights to liberty, property and life.

This is why the hive collectivists of Obama and Company should be reading Ender's Shadow. We will not act the way they expect us to act -- the way our previous patience and forebearance has led them to believe that we will act -- and their next depredation, no matter how minor it may seem to them, could lead to their utter destruction just as it did to the fictional Bugger queen and all her race. And they will be, just as the Bugger queen, utterly astonished when it happens.

Rabbi Ben Kamin, who lives in Southern California, responded sensibly to the hysteria of the Mount Soledad cross-hunters who claimed to be irreparably "hurt" by the monument: "After six decades, and hundreds of thousands of visitors, cyclists, hikers, thoughtful folks who simply admire the inspiring vista of land, sky and ocean, the Cross remains simply a beacon, a marker and a landmark." Kamin wrote that he "once lived adjacent to the site, and it did not bother me then, and it does not bother, offend or intimidate me now. I remain much more concerned about the glaring mercantilism that has by now drained all the fall/winter holidays, from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah to Christmas, of any dignity or theological poetry."

Amen to that. Militant atheists won't rest until every last expression of faith is eradicated from the public square. They don't stand for reason or religious liberty. They are vengeful purveyors of cruciphobia. The everlasting good news, of course, is that in the end, hope will triumph over hate. Faith will outlast fear. And God's love will prevail long after physical crosses have fallen.

An old Baptist joke: "What did Madalyn Murray O'Hair say thirty seconds after she was murdered by one of her atheist supporters as she gazed into the face of God?"

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.